Kern is consistently against art daring to have a political message. Or he doesn't think games are art. It's never been clear. But his stance effectively reduces to that games should never present a moral (what he calls "political") challenge, no matter how anodyne, to a player, and he's consistently legitimated the idea that these moral challenges include "a game, somewhere, is not explicitly made for a majority-straight, majority-white, majority-male audience."

That Kern is on the side of decency on this particular issue is to his credit; he spends most of his time on Twitter contributing to the open-sewer effect. In the calculus he has exhibited since contributing to the original flare-up of "ethics in game journalism" he's made it pretty clear that Call of Duty "oo-rah" and carting out the drone strikes is apolitical but a game focusing on a homosexual relationship is political (because such a game "shoves it in the face" of that majority audience by dint of its existence), so make of it what you will.

There's politics, and there's politics. There's a difference between discussing whatever the US President blurted out on Twitter today, discussing whatever gaffe some local politician made, discussing which party is better and why, whether a group is pushing it too far, and then "abuses of human rights and freedom". The difference has a bit of "you'll know it when you see it" flavor to it. I think that in this light, he sees the issue of Hong Kong not as "politics", but as the real deal, an issue of more fundamental values and freedoms.

I've recently noticed that some people don't see the difference between "types" of politics. I don't understand why. To me, the difference has always been obvious. Some politics are about really important issues. Most of it is bullshit, just something that makes people with nothing better to do to jump at each other's throats. People have been creating "safe spaces" shielded from the latter for ages. The concept of not talking about the bullshit politics and religion at the dinner table is quite old.

Yeah, advocating for human rights isn't a political issue. To claim "I don't want politics in my games" is a cop out to ignore having to deal with/learn/understand what's going on.

If someone just doesn't care, OK, but don't hide behind "I don't want to talk about politics". This isn't politics. This is life.

It means that is in favor of keeping a game's content apolitical, while he supports free speech and calling out corruption in the gaming scene. The former is a long standing debate point in the gaming community sparked by developers of many high profile games with clear political messages saying that their games are not political. The other is the current situation with Blizzard and NBA.

>Seems like he wants to have his cake and eat it too

Your premise only makes any sense in an utterly black and white world.

There are many different levels of enforcement. Blizzard could’ve sent Blitzchung a note pointing out their significant Chinese audience and asked him to refrain from such comments in the future during Blizzard events.

I'm pretty confident he means keeping politics out of games' content.

Or (remembering older tweets from him), keeping out political content/messages that might appear too blatant, preachy or out-of-place in the context of the game.

With the caveat that his idea of "preachy" or "out of place" is existing, sure.

There is a mendacious and regressive strain of insecurity amongst game consumers these days where being expected to countenance the existence of those unlike them in their entertainment--when that Other doesn't just exist to be killed anyway--is an attack on that consumer, and Kern has done a lot to feed that tire fire.

I read this bit as an emphasis on the unfair punishment. It's one thing for Blizzard to disqualify and ban Blitzchung. It's another thing to withhold his winnings and fire the two event commentators who let Blitzchung make his statement.